Worst. Teacher. EVAR.

December 17 – Lesson Learned. What was the best thing you learned about yourself this past year? And how will you apply that lesson going forward? (Author: Tara Weaver)

I’m not finished yet. I have a lot of learning, growing and improving to do. Each time I look back on my past, I remind myself how far up the road I’ve been walking. 2010 will be no different to look back on. The things that I thought made me healthy and happy this year, may be things that make me shake my head in disbelief in 2011. It always seems to work out that way, doesn’t it? You think to yourself, ‘look how far I’ve come! How much I’ve matured!’, and then a few years later you look back and think, ‘holy hell, what an unstable nitwit!’

I’ve become me, but I’m also still stuck in the life of me sometimes. I have habits and patterns that are destructive, but comfortable, like the friend who gives you $20 to drink the concoction they just made in the blender. You know it’s a bad idea and will have horrendous consequences, but you do it anyway, because that’s what you know.

Later, when you wake up in the ICU, you think to yourself, ‘never again’… and even though you try to fight it a little harder next time, you somehow still end up eating that crusted wad of peanut butter and hoping your friend never tells you what they put inside it before they handed it to you along with a crisp $20 bill.

I am terribly insecure. I’m pretty sure that everyone in my life is going to leave me at some point. I know this isn’t true, but I also know that this is how my brain works. It isn’t something I learned this year, no, but I *did* learn that I’m still insecure and think everyone is going to leave me. That’s good to know, because being in denial about my mental deficiencies doesn’t do anyone any good now, does it?

The lesson that comes from this is that I’m not finished yet. I still have a lot of growing and improving to do. It sure as hell isn’t the ‘best’ lesson I learned this year, but recognizing it is the only way I will go forward next year.